Bob Horton: Truth about PCBs still buried

Updated
10:16 pm EST, Thursday, March 7, 2013

FILE: Greenwich may have the option of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up toxic soil from its high school campus, but several environmental and health experts say the town doesn't have to go that far to ensure students' health is not at risk.

FILE: Greenwich may have the option of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up toxic soil from its high school campus, but several environmental and health experts say the town doesn't have to go

FILE: Greenwich may have the option of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up toxic soil from its high school campus, but several environmental and health experts say the town doesn't have to go that far to ensure students' health is not at risk.

FILE: Greenwich may have the option of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up toxic soil from its high school campus, but several environmental and health experts say the town doesn't have to go

When environmental engineers plunged sampling probes into Greenwich High School soil recently, they pulled out a huge surprise: a potential $146 million price tag to remove highly toxic PCBs from the 54-acre site.

That is a shocking figure, more than 36 percent of the total municipal budget for 2012-2013, and it may not tell the whole economic story. But it confirms what some neighbors have claimed for years and Town Hall has long denied: The former swamp that became GHS in 1970 was a dump site for thousands of truckloads of poisonous compounds.

Town officials are doing their best to control information and dialogue around the most recent environmental findings. They are downplaying the possibility of cleanup ever running well north of $100 million.

And, most recently, the boards of Estimate and Taxation, Education, and Selectmen held a joint, closed-door meeting to hear directly from AECOM, the environmental consultant contracted by the town to analyze the site.

By keeping the public out of this full-scale briefing from experts, town leaders immediately threw suspicion over whether the information they released the next day is full and complete. Then, to add insult to injury, they ask for written questions from the public, even after they denied people the education afforded by hearing a direct dialogue between our elected officials and the AECOM professionals who drafted the report. We are expected to wade unassisted through page after page of technical findings and know exactly what questions to ask. This is not so much a public information process as it is an effort to control what people know.

Immediate history of public (non) disclosure further adds to the perception that there is much we are not being told about the true scope of the health ramifications and costs associated with PCB removal and the eventual construction of the new GHS auditorium and music classrooms. Last December, the federal Environmental Protection Agency gave the town permission to remove PCB-laden soil from the new building footprint. However, it also said the town had to seek all necessary permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection regarding "pollutant mobility." That letter is the last publicly available document posted on the website, however, the town is expected to receive bids this week on this work. Presumably, these bids are based on specifications and information supplied by the town. Why are those documents not readily available for all of us to review?

But I want to revisit the phrase in quotes in the preceding paragraph: "pollutant mobility." To me, that is environmental jargon for "stuff flows downhill," especially in a swamp. But the AECOM report wants us to believe two things: the PCBs are limited largely to the back of the Hillside Road site and there is no evidence that they have migrated off the property in the last 50 years, even though it is a huge wetlands and two streams flow through the property into Millbrook and eventually to Long Island Sound.

I'm no geologist, but it defies belief that material dumped in a swamp, on property that has often been too flooded for use by students and faculty after even minimal rainfalls, remains exactly where it was dumped half a century ago. If I lived downstream, I'd demand more tests. PCBs are nasty chemicals that pose serious health risks.

The environmental consultants also reportedly write that the PCB dumping dates to the 1960s. The exact date may not seem important, but we need to remember that town officials have been reluctant to acknowledge any PCB dumping on the site, and now we are expected to believe they know exactly when it happened? Regulations governing dumping of PCBs came into effect in the late 1960s. Any dumping at the GHS site after that would be illegal and possibly criminal, and subject to huge fines.

Though the report does not identify the PCBs' origins, it is widely known that PCBs and fly ash were found in heavy concentrations at the former Cos Cob Power Plant site. When the town purchased the property from the state, it became responsible for cleaning up the deeply polluted ground that bordered on Cos Cob Harbor. That work was done in the early 2000s. Where was it dumped? How was it collected? Is there any connection between the PCBs removed from the power plant and dumping that took place at GHS during the same time frame?

Several people in town have asked these questions for years and have been dismissed as everything from environmental crazies to conspiracy theorists. Events of the last week call for a much wider explanation from the various town, state and local agencies involved.